You keep saying you’ll visit a museum but here we are, Fall already in full swing, and you’re still too busy.
That’s why public art is so great: you’re walking around the city, running errands and doing you, and BAM—culture. No museum required.
One new project spans every borough so you really can’t miss it.
Last week, world-renowned artist and human rights activist Ai Weiwei unveiled his public art exhibition, “Good Fences Make Good Neighbors,” across the city.
This massive, multifaceted project sprawls across all five boroughs—large-scale works in Central Park and Washington Square Park, site-specific constructions on top of and in between private buildings, and smaller installations mounted in and on bus shelters, newsstands, LinkNYC kiosks, and flagpoles.
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Some prominent locations are the Arch at Washington Square Park, Doris C Freedman Place in Central Park, and the Unisphere at Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens. The private sites include 48 East 7th Street, 189 Chrystie Street, 248 Bowery, and outside The Cooper Union.
The citywide exhibition is inspired by the international migration crisis, addressing issues like growing hostility towards immigrants, the rise of global nationalism and the expansive refugee crisis.
By “growing” out of the existing urban infrastructure and using the fabric of the city as a foundation, Weiwei highlights the role of the fence in dividing people and the ubiquitousness of that division, which, like the pervasive installations, is all around us.
Raised amid the upheavals of China’s Cultural Revolution, Weiwei strongly empathizes with displaced people because he’s been in their position. Weiwei and his family were branded state enemies and exiled. Eventually, the artist made his way to NYC in the 1980s.
But don’t worry about rushing to see them, you have time to leisurely experience each location, as the project runs through February 2018.
[via Curbed New York]